The secret negotiation of the treaty, however, went on between the two kings. Louis had submitted to exorbitant conditions on the score of money, and to another, moreover, sufficiently weighty. It was that Charles, converted to the Romish faith, should share with him in the conquest of Holland, should send a considerable military force thither, and should keep for himself the Dutch islands opposite to England—an advantage so enormous to the latter power that it would have rendered national the odious alliance, and glorified the treason.
Two points still remained unsettled: first, to persuade Charles to commence the war before his conversion—a step considered easy to obtain; but that conversion terrified him when the moment came for carrying it out. Secondly—and which proved the most difficult—was to induce him to despatch very few troops—too few to take and afterwards hold the territory promised him. Louis XIV. stipulated to send 120,000 men there; Charles II. engaged to furnish 6000, which number his sister prevailed upon him to reduce to 4000.
Such was the sad, disgraceful, deplorable negotiation imposed by the great King upon his sister-in-law. She had always obeyed him (as she herself said), and she obeyed him in this matter, rendering her brother doubly a traitor by his abandonment of the latter condition, which lessened his treason.
Everybody had envied the Duchess her visit to England, none knew the bitterness it entailed. The King confided in her, and yet distrusted her. Otherwise he would not have had her accompanied by the pretty doll, with her baby face, whose office it was to ensnare the licentious Charles. Henrietta was compelled to take her over to England, and, in fact, to chaperone her. For such self-abasement the King had handsomely rewarded the compliant maid-of-honour, promising to give her an estate, and so much per head for each bastard she might have by Charles of England.
Henrietta endured all this shameful bargaining, hoping that her royal brother would obtain from the Pope the dissolution of her marriage with the worthless, stupid, profligate Duke of Orleans, on whom her wit and charms were equally thrown away. She might then remain at his court and be the virtual Queen of England, by governing him through female influence. Her brilliant hopes, however, were destined to be speedily dissipated, and her career cut short by a painful and treacherous death.
On her return from England, two surprises awaited her: not only did she find the Duke, her husband, exasperated against her, but what she had least of all expected, the King very cold in his demeanour towards her. Louis had got from her all he desired. His changed attitude emboldened a cabal in her own household to effect her destruction. Those who formed it were creatures of her husband’s detestable favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine, whom they believed had been banished by the King through her entreaties. The poor Duchess wept bitterly on finding that she had now no support from any one about her. The Duke, in the exercise of his marital authority, took her from Court, not permitting her any longer to visit Versailles. The King might have insisted upon her attendance there but did not. In tears, she suffered herself to be carried off to St. Cloud. There she felt herself alone, with every hand against her.
The weather was excessively hot. On her arrival at St. Cloud, she took a bath, which made her ill, but she soon recovered from it, and during two days was tolerably well—eating and sleeping. On the 28th of June she asked for a cup of chicory, drank it, and at the same moment became red, then pale, and shrieked aloud. The poor Duchess, commonly so patient under pain, gave way under the excess of her anguish, her eyes filled with tears, and she exclaimed that she was dying.
Inquiries were made about the water the Duchess had drunk, and her waiting-woman said that she had not prepared it herself, but had ordered it to be made, and then asked that some of it might be given her, drank of it; but there is no evidence to show that the water had not been changed in the interval.
Was it an attack of cholera, as was said? The symptoms in no wise indicated that species of disorder. The Duchess’s health was very much shattered, and she was doubtless liable to be rapidly carried off. But the event had very plainly been hastened (as in the case of Don Carlos); nature had been assisted. The Duke’s valets—who were, as to fidelity, much more the servants of his banished favourite, the Chevalier de Lorraine—comprehended that, in the approaching alliance of the two kings, and the need they would have of each other’s confidence, the Duchess might in some moment of tenderness recover her absolute power over the King, who would in such event sweep his brother’s household clear of them all. They well knew the Court, and surmised that, if she were to die, the alliance would nevertheless be maintained, and the matter hushed up; that she would be lamented, but not avenged; that facts accomplished would be respected.
Good care was taken not to confide the secret to the wretched Duke, her husband; it was even thought that it might be possible to get him out of the way—to keep him in Paris, where by chance, indeed, he was detained. Philip of Orleans was really astonished when he beheld his agonised wife, and ordered an antidote to be given her; but time was lost in administering the poudre de vipère. The Duchess asked only for an emetic, and the doctors obstinately refused her one. Strange, too, the King, who, on his arrival, remonstrated with them, was equally unsuccessful in obtaining for the sufferer that which she craved. The medicos held steadily to their opinion: they had pronounced it to be cholera, and they would not swallow their own words.